Covid-19 virus escaped from Chinese laboratory: US report

Washington: A US-based report claimed that the Covid-19 virus leaked out of a laboratory in China, reports IANS.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the report, published by the US Energy Department, is classified intelligence recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. It highlights how different intelligence agencies have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin.

As per people who have read the classified report, the Energy Department made its judgement with "low confidence", the WSJ reported.

Several agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), also agree with the lab leak claim.

The agency, in 2021, came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak, with "moderate confidence" and still holds to this view.

However, four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided, the media report said.

The Energy Department "continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of Covid-19, as the President directed", a spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The agency has, however, declined to discuss details of its assessment, the report said.

"Kudos to those who are willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know and don't know about Covid origins," said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist, who welcomed word of the updated findings.

"My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency," Relman said.

The Covid-19 virus first circulated in Wuhan, China, no later than November 2019, according to the US 2021 intelligence report.

More than two years after the pandemic, the origins of Covid-19 remain unclear.

It has been a political and scientific debate, with scientists and politicians globally contending that the coronavirus jumped into people from bats or has been leaked from a laboratory.

China, on its part, has placed limits on investigations by the World Health Organization. It opposed the lab leak theory and argued that the virus originated outside their land.